PRETTY POISON 1968

For as long as I can remember, I've been intrigued by films whose themes dramatize a perception of reality I have held since my teens: the banality of evil. A term first coined in 1963 by political theorist Hannah Arendt in her Holocaust trial book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, it's a theory that has gone on to signify many things, most persistently for me—the notion of wickedness thriving in the most innocuous of environments. 

Rosemary's Baby found Satanic evil lurking behind the everyday meddlesome intrusions of nosy neighbors; The Stepford Wives exposed the murderous misogyny cloaked within patriarchal social systems; and Andy Warhol's Bad used basic-black comedy to satirize the lethal side of suburban materialism. In Pretty Poison, a bizarre little chiller that slipped past audiences in 1968 but has since developed a loyal cult following, first-time director Noel Black (with an award-winning screenplay by Lorenzo Semple, Jr. adapted from the novel, She Let Him Continue by Stephen Geller) treads a path well-worn by directors as diverse as Alfred Hitchcock (Shadow of a Doubt) and David Lynch (Blue Velvet): the dark underside of small-town life.

Anthony Perkins as Dennis Pitt

Tuesday Weld as Sue Ann Stepanek

Beverly Garland as Mrs. Stepanek

Anthony Perkins is Dennis Pitt, a recently-released-from-a-mental-institution loner (for the arson death of his aunt when he was 15) with, to put it charitably, a tenuous grip on reality. A pathological liar, albeit not a particularly accomplished one, Pitt is given to flights of espionage fantasy so elaborate, one is never quite sure…least of all Dennis himself…if he knows he's lying or not. Into his peculiar orbit comes drill team flag-bearer Sue Ann Stepanek, a 17-year-old high-schooler every bit as wholesome and unrefined as her name.

Convincing the gullible Sue Ann that he's a CIA agent on a covert mission to investigate environmental crimes committed by the chemical plant where he's employed, the delusional Pitt fancies himself the city slicker to Sue Ann's easily-seduced farmer's daughter. Unfortunately, it isn't long before things grimly escalate in this bizarre game of "Who's zooming who?" - a game that finds the hunter, a tad slow on the uptake, discovering he has been captured by the game.

Although Most Men Are Loath to Admit It, Women Terrify Them
Pretty Poison dramatizes this unassailable fact (the very genesis of the femme fatale) by adopting a familiar film noir trope: the wiseguy male who thinks he knows all the answers, gets himself mixed up with a woman who has rewritten the book. 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

One of my strongest memories of being a pre-teen in the late '60s was the prevailing, almost oppressive sense (from movies, television shows, and newspaper articles) that America was in a tumultuous state of self-reflection. After so many years of looking outside ourselves at Germany, Russia, Japan, and the vague specter of communism as this monolith of absolute evil out to overthrow our just and unsullied American Way of Life; the ethical and moral morass that was the Vietnam War—coupled with the rash of political assassinations, civil-rights related violence, and campus rioting exploding throughout the country—posed the discomforting postulate that we were now living in an age when what we most had to fear was ourselves.

Movies as dissimilar and ostensibly politically benign as Last Summer, Rosemary's Baby,  Bonnie and Clyde, Petulia, Angel Angel Down We Go, Easy Rider, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? The Parallax View, and Targets, all reflected the late-'60s zeitgeist: ambiguity about and disillusion with the beliefs, conventions, and institutions in which we once placed our absolute trust.

The All-American Girl
Rather pathetically, this image of a handgun amongst the innocent, little-girl trappings of a teen's dressing table still embodies the American ethos for a great many people: every man, woman, and child in the country armed to the teeth.

For a time, it felt as though everything clean and shiny about American culture was revealing itself to have an underside of decay and rot. Pretty Poison, a film whose title even captures this sense of wary disquietude, gives us a film that appears on the surface to be a harmless, anarchic black comedy about misfit youth, but is, in fact, a twisted and rather unexpected tale where nothing is as it seems and good intentions don't amount to very much.

Dennis studying a vial of the chemical his plant produces whose waste pollutes the river and nearby lake...or is he thinking of Sue Ann?

American films in the sixties were obsessed with unearthing the villains who presented themselves as the clean-cut upholders of family values; in exposing the hypocrisy behind the small-town bastions of normalcy and conformity; and in confronting the violent institutions and belief systems that casually traded lies for lives in the belief that something real was being defended. Films like Pretty Poison—films that sought to explore the enemy within—asked audiences to take a good look at what America had become.

PERFORMANCES

Whether Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld deconstruct or merely exploit their trademarked screen personas in Pretty Poison is debatable. But what is clear is that in assuming roles that both recall and add unexpected twists to past performances for which they've become indelibly linked in the public's mind (Psycho's unhinged Norman Bates for Perkins, Lord Love a Duck's covetous co-ed Barbara Ann Greene for Weld), Perkins and Weld—who share an electric chemistry—take audience preconceptions and make us choke on them.

It begins to dawn on Dennis that Sue Ann is something of a force to be reckoned with

Tuesday Weld, an incredibly talented actress who has shunned fame the way most people avoid a trip to the dentist, is said to have been miserable during the making of the film, loathed her director, and blamed him for her giving what she considered to be one of her worst screen performances. (Although upset and trying to make a point, Ms. Weld should know that dubious honor falls to her timeless work in Sex Kittens Go to College.)
On the contrary, despite being labeled a "neurotic" by Pretty Poison co-star John Randolph and said to have been frequently in tearful hysterics during the filming, Tuesday Weld gives a masterfully canny performance in the film. One that is, at turns, both charming and chilling. She's mesmerizingly good, her performance here ranks among the best of her career. And at almost 25 years of age at the time and playing 17, she somehow manages to get away with it...her preternatural physical development hinting at a shrouded psychological maturity.

Roger Corman stalwart (and personal fave), the consistently excellent Beverly Garland
 is a particular standout as Sue Ann's brassy mother. 

And then there is Anthony Perkins. When I was growing up, he always gave me the creeps. But upon discovering more of his pre-Psycho work, I have begun to find him strangely attractive and have since developed quite the posthumous crush. In Pretty Poison, Perkins is again cast to type in the kind of role he found near-impossible to escape following Psycho. Yet, typecast as he was, no one could ever accuse him of sleepwalking his way through Pretty Poison. His Dennis Pitt is one of his more affecting and underplayed performances. Sympathetic, complex, and imbued with a great deal of dimension. I especially like how his character reverts to an almost childlike state of bewilderment and confusion as his overactive fantasy life spirals out of his control into a nightmarish reality.

John Randolph plays Dennis' appropriately concerned case officer, Morton Azenauer

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Adding to Pretty Poison's already considerable quirk factor are the odd ways in which Pretty Poison's plot intersects with Tuesday Weld's 1966 teen-culture spoof Lord Love a Duck and Weld's real life. Spoler note: If you haven't yet seen Pretty Poison, you may want to skip over this section.

Pretty Poison / Lord Love a Duck / Real life

The characters Weld plays in both films have aggressively contentious relationships with their mothers. In real-life, Weld loathed her mother and was fond of telling reporters that her mother was dead, even though she was quite alive and kicking. This prompted Weld's mother, one Yosene Ker Weld, to write the tell-all book If It's Tuesday...I Must Be DEAD! published in 2003 - ironically, after her death.

Pretty Poison / Lord Love a Duck / Real life

The ageless, feckless men Weld manipulates in both films are portrayed by actors (Perkins, Roddy McDowall) who, in real life were closeted gay men. In 1972, Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins reteamed for the film Play it As It Lays, in which Weld portrayed an actress suffering a nervous breakdown and Perkins her gay best friend, a suicidal film director. In real life, the depressive Anthony Perkins was indeed Weld's good friend and directed two films...one of them being the last-straw sequel Psycho III.
The Lord Love a Duck connection finds Weld marrying the assistant of her good friend Roddy McDowall in 1965, only to discover that her new husband also happened to have been McDowall's lover.

Pretty Poison / Lord Love a Duck

Weld's character in both films is a dissatisfied, disaffected high-school senior who comes under the influence of a strange man whom she can manipulate into helping her out with her "problems."

Pretty Poison / Lord Love a Duck

In both films, Weld's character rises like a phoenix from the ashes while her male compatriot rots in prison.

  

Pretty Poison / How Awful About Allan

In Pretty Poison and the 1970 TV movie, How Awful About Allan, Anthony Perkins plays a man who, in his youth, causes the accidental death of a relative by fire. Both roles cast the twitchy actor as a potential villain, only later to reveal him as a victim of a complex, calculated scheme.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Given how superior their performances are and what a thoroughly hard-hitting thriller it is, it's a pity that neither Anthony Perkins nor Tuesday Weld care(d) much for Pretty Poison. Weld, for the aforementioned animosity she felt toward her director, Perkins, less for his performance than for finding the film "slow moving." I remember being intrigued by the newspaper ads and TV commercials when Pretty Poison was released in the San Francisco area in 1968. Still, given all that, it seemed to disappear from theaters so quickly that I never got around to seeing it until the late 1970s, when it was screened at a revival theater compatibly double-billed with Pert Bogdanovich's Targets (another socko, small film from the same year that I highly recommend).

I was simply floored by Pretty Poison and still consider it to be a film far superior and more frightening than some of the more high-profile films with similar themes (Badlands, Kalifornia, Natural Born Killers). There's really much to recommend it, not the least being a '60s vibe that somehow doesn't feel dated, and, most gratifyingly, top-notch lead performances by two of Hollywood's more charismatic (if idiosyncratic) stars.

She Let Him Continue
"I was such a fool, Mr. Azenauer. I let him go on even after I knew he was crazy..."

BONUS MATERIAL
In 1996, Pretty Poison was made into a pedestrian TV movie of profound mediocrity. All plot, no subtext.

Happily, Noel Black's Pretty Poison is available on DVD. Unfortunately, the U.S. version is without the director's commentary on the UK DVD release. 

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2013

DINAH EAST 1970

It's a little-known fact, but just three years after 1967's hippie revolution dubbed "The Summer of Love," America enjoyed an unofficial "Transgender Summer." It occurred in 1970 when the films Myra Breckinridge, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, The Christine Jorgensen Story, and Dinah East were all released in the very same month. Before summer became known as the time Hollywood reserved for the release of its potential blockbuster action flicks, sci-fi movies, and superhero franchises, the movie industry once associated the warm summer months with the Drive-In trade and thus released a slew of exploitation films and teen attraction fare. That meant biker flicks, B-horror movies, and beach party musicals. It was also the perfect market for softcore sleaze. 

I suspect it wasn't just happenstance that all the above-listed films with gender-identity plotlines were released in June of 1970. The lower budget features clearly sought to compete with and share the publicity overflow of whatever market was imagined to be waiting with bated breath for the release of 20th Century-Fox's big-budget Myra Breckinridge. Fans of camp and cinéma de l'étrange will most certainly recognize three of the titles, but what exactly is Dinah East? Well, to put it simply, Dinah East is the best camp classic you've never heard of.

Jeremy Stockwell as Dinah East
"Too much love or too little of it...isn't that why people take chances?"

Matt Bennett as Ex-boxer, Tank Swenson
"It makes no difference to me whether you're a man or a woman!"

Ultra Violet as Costume designer, Daniela
"Dinah, have you thought of what will happen if you are found out?"

Ray Foster as Matinee idol, Tony Locke
"You took me home and gave me more liquor than I ever had. Then asked me to drop my drawers!"

Andy Davis as Alan Sloan, Dinah's attorney
"Have you always thought of me as...a man? I mean, 100% male in every respect?"

Reid Smith as Jeff East, Dinah's adopted son
"I suppose being one's mother gives one the right to look every once in a while."

Joe Taylor as Bobby Sloan. Alan's son and Jeff's best friend
"How did you and Dinah East make love...did you do it to her, or did she do it to you?"

Dinah East takes a “What if it were really true?” approach to the age-old rumor about silver screen legend Mae West being transgender. (A legend gleefully kept alive today by West’s understandably grudge-holding Myra Breckinridge co-star Raquel Welch.) From this premise, Dinah East fashions a fictitious, deliriously camp (i.e., dead serious), surprisingly sincere soap opera about a 1950s screen siren whose death reveals her life to have been one great big drag. 

The brainchild of producer Paula Stewart, publicist-to-the-stars Phil Paladino, and screenwriter/ director Gene Nash, Dinah East (originally titled The Demise of Dinah East and The Great Put-On of Dinah East, alternately) chronicles—through flashbacks—the guarded life of movie goddess Dinah East, and tackles the subsequent emotional and psychological fallout amongst those who came to know her, following the headline-making revelation of her death.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Dinah East (a title that not only recalls the whispers about Mae West, but the lesbian rumors surrounding TV personality Dinah Shore during her heyday) is part 1940s "Suffering in mink" women's film, part Douglas Sirk melodrama, and part daytime soap. Or at least that's how it sees itself. Conceived as the type of glossy, behind-the-scenes Hollywood expose Jacqueline Susann and Harold Robbins came to be known for, due to its meager budget, amateurish performances, and frequent concessions to its sexploitation roots, it comes off largely as the kind of gender-fluid underground film of the sort associated with John Waters or Andy Warhol.
But what Dinah East lacks in production values, it more than makes up for in deliciously low-rent '70s ambiance. It boasts gaudy fashions, tacky décor, a cliche-saturated plot, and Hollywood insider jokes—Dinah does a pretty good impersonation of columnist Louella Parsons, and matinee idol Tony Locke parodies Tony Curtis' infamous, "Yondah lies da castle of my faddah."—plus, a sensibility that's both salacious and sentimental. In addition:

Lesbianism!

Wigs!

Slow-motion romantic romps!

Lots of full-frontal male nudity!

Scenes in '70s gay bars!

Porn-level  Performances!
"That's too hard to swallow...love for a son born out of rape? That's much too heavy to swallow!"

Derisible dialog accompanied by theatrical,  unconvincing displays of temperament!
Alan- "You're nothing but a deranged little faggot!"  (*Slap*)

Did I mention the male nudity?

In several ways, Dinah East does indeed recall the work of Jacqueline Susann. If one of Jacqueline Susann's novels was directed by Ed Wood, cast with models from a 1970 Ah Men catalog, and produced by Andy Warhol. From start to finish, Dinah East is such a campy delight; I'm still rather stunned that I had never heard of the film before a couple of years ago. Everything about it seems ripe for discovery by the cult hit/midnight movie crowd, yet no one I know has ever heard of it, and there is no mention of it even in books devoted to trash obscurities.
As is often the case with movies slipping through the cracks, Dinah East owes much of its obscurity to a muddle of legal issues involving copyright ownership and distribution. Too bad. This is a film deserving of a much wider audience.

Tony takes Dinah to the fights
Ray Foster (l.) was to be seen that same year as Mae West's
stereotypically fey receptionist in Myra Breckinridge

According to producer Paula Stewart (a former Broadway star [Wildcat, What Makes Sammy Run?], lifelong friend of Lucille Ball, and one-time wife of Burt Bacharach), the X-rated Dinah East had its world premiere in San Franciso in December of 1970. It opened in Los Angeles (even garnering a favorable review from LA Times critic, Kevin Thomas) in early 1971. That is, before the government shut it down and confiscated all prints of the film due to unpaid withholding taxes. Unable to meet its financial obligations, Dinah East was fairly submerged in a quagmire of copyright and legal hassles that extended over several years, rendering the film virtually lost.

Stewart's legal hassle account contradicts the more publicity-friendly reason used to promote the 2010 DVD release. DVD promo material asserts that Mae West herself halted distribution of the film because she was displeased with it and didn't want the potentially libelous film to distract from her Myra Breckinridge comeback. However, Paula Stewart, whom I spoke to by phone before writing this, claims to have known Mae West well and says that while the legendary star was most assuredly “Pissed off” by Dinah East's obvious allusions to the rumors that have followed her throughout her career, she did not in any way try to hinder its release. 

Dinah East director and screenwriter, Gene Nash, was also a manager, composer, and country western singer (1959 single, "I'm an Eskimo, too").  

PERFORMANCES

As Marilyn Monroe-esque glamour queen Dinah East, New York actor Jeremy Stockwell (he appeared Off-Broadway in Fortune and Men’s Eyes - 1969) is a little too stiff and inexpressive to radiate the necessary diva quality to make the character a believable superstar (Candy Darling would have been great). Wearing a wide array of wigs and smart slacks ensembles, Stockwell comes off resembling Doris Day, Carol Wayne, or Donna Mills depending on the scene. He plays Dinah in a refreshingly straightforward manner, happily refraining from adding any problematic "feminine" flourishes that could have instantly turned the character into a caricature. 

Indeed, Stockwell's performance is infused with so much sincerity that after a while, it seems as though his constricted body language and modulated line readings are actually acting choices; the intentional means of conveying the behavior of a person holding themselves in reserve for fear of detection. The screenplay leaves viewers on their own to intuit what would motivate an aspiring actor to keep up such a life-changing charade for so long (like Dustin Hoffman's Tootsie, the initial goal is to merely land a job). Nor does it shed much light on whether Dinah's gender identity as a woman is an actual realization rather than a deception. In any event, whatever flamboyant fun is lost by Stockwell refusing to camp it up as a movie diva is more than compensated for in the depiction of Dinah East as such a likable person. 

Maybe I'm just corny, but the romance that develops between Dinah
 and ex-boxer Tank is really sweet. 

This brings me to one of the points I think works against Dinah East ever realizing its true camp potential: the film doesn't have a bitchy bone in its body. The film is singularly lacking in bitchiness or spite, prime ingredients in gay film camp-dom. The characters in Dinah East are flawed but decent, and treat one another in an uncharacteristically considerate manner for an exploitation film (the very odd character of Dinah's emotionally-conflicted attorney, Alan, notwithstanding).
Stockwell’s performance falls into arch camp primarily due to the limitations of his acting, the Douglas Sirk-inspired twists of the melodramatic plot, and the camp array of wigs and '70s fashions at his disposal. Beyond those trappings, there's a wellspring of sincerity written into the story of Dinah East that makes the characters too compassionately conceived for us to want to laugh at them for too long.

A big star requires big hair

But sincerity is not what one usually watches exploitation films for, so fans of over-the-top drag theater might be disappointed in finding Dinah is no Margo Channing or Helen Lawson. Though often funny, the script is not well-acquainted with wit, so those looking for All About Eve levels of catty dialog and diva posturing will have to look elsewhere. By way of compensation, the film does at least try to shoehorn nudity and sex into the plot with clockwork regularity. Also, there is a priceless scene set in a gay bar (Bitchy queens! Nude go-go dancer! A bubble machine!) that screams 1070 and gives a hint of the levels of outrageousness this film could have risen to if it just wasn't so darn decent. 

A somewhat dodgy-looking movie poster for one of Dinah East's films  

Although essentially a melodrama, Dinah East does contain much humor  (whether you find it to be particularly funny is another thing), but happily, there is unintentional humor in abundance. There are laughs to be had at the expense of the film's pushed-to-its-limit budget (the '50s flashbacks are particularly challenging), uneven performances, often hilariously tin-eared dialogue, and the curious commingling of sincere soap opera with grindhouse sex exploitation. While Dinah East's endearing ineptitude is to die for, I also found myself appreciating its lack of cynicism or self-aware snark. So many of the movies that have gained cult status in the gay community have done so in part because of the comedy inherent in their outre homophobia (Valley of the Dolls, Myra Breckinridge). Dinah East at least comes off as far ahead of its time in its empathetic depiction of gays, lesbians, and transgender.

Cornball montages were very popular in '70s movies, and Dinah East has a romantic montage that wouldn't be out of place in a Debbie Reynolds or Doris Day film. Tank and Dinah fall in love (rather appealingly) to the wince-inducing strains of, "Thank you, Alexander Graham Bell...you're swell!" An original song sung by '40's singing combo, Jon and Sondra Steele (My Happiness- 1948). 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Movies about Hollywood can always be counted on for the camp recycling of over-familiar soap opera tropes and hoary show business clichés. Dinah East is no exemption. With the film's obviously slim budget not allowing for even a passable representation of the 1950s or a convincing depiction of the opulent high life of a major Hollywood star (Edgar Bergen’s home stands in as Dinah’s Bel Air mansion), the one thing Dinah East gets incredibly right is its depiction of Hollywood as a town where it's possible to keep lifelong secrets simply due to the fact that absolutely everybody else in town has secrets they also don't want to have exposed.

In the satiric 1973 Hollywood murder mystery, The Last of Sheila (penned by Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim, two then-closeted homosexuals who obviously knew a thing or two about the need to keep secrets), the character played by Raquel Welch sums up the phenomenon perfectly when she says: "That's the thing about secrets. We all know stuff about each other...we just don't know the same stuff."

Dinah and Daniela forge a friendship out of  a commitment to protecting one another

In a welcome change of pace from most hetero-centric exploitation films full of shapely but untalented bimbos hired with an eye towards the director’s casting couch, Dinah East is loaded with good-looking himbos and male eye-candy who can’t act their way out of their tight pants. Which, I'm happy to say, they're never required to wear them for very long.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
With all the great purveyors of cinema camp either dead (Jacqueline Susann, Andy Warhol, Ed Wood, Russ Meyer) or unofficially retired (John Waters, Roger Corman), I can't tell you what a kick it was unearthing an honest-to-god, period-perfect, classic piece of ripened '70s cheese like Dinah East. Although virtually every frame feels made-to-order for my personal warped sense of aesthetics, it was actually my partner who brought the film to my attention after discovering it on Netflix. I fell in love with Dinah East at first sight.
It's funny unintentionally; sometimes, it's even funny on purpose. It's bizarre, silly, audacious, tacky, unevenly paced, and mostly terribly acted. But it's also marvelously entertaining, better-plotted than most movies today, and as a bonus, given the subject matter's potential for vulgarity and offensiveness, it's a surprisingly sweet-natured, forward-thinking film.
It has become an instant favorite of mine, and I understand that it has been re-released on DVD in a restored, widescreen version that should be a good deal brighter and crisper than these screencaps indicate. Still, Dinah East is one of those films worth seeing any way you can get it. They don't make 'em like this anymore. And more's the pity for us lovers of retro camp cinema.

Dialogue between two grave-diggers at the end of the film (one being Studio-54- flash-in-the-pan-to-be, Sterling St. Jacques)
"Just goes to show you; you can really put the world on if you try hard enough."

"Yeah man, but who wants to go to that much trouble?"

BONUS MATERIAL

Actor Jeremy Stockwell out of drag.
Photo by Kenn Duncan from the 1969 Off-Broadway production of Fortune & Men's Eyes

Some of My Best Friends Are... (1971)

Dinah East's Joe Taylor (bottom left) went on to appear with Warhol superstar Candy Darling in another gay-themed film that has somewhat disappeared. That's Gil Gerard of Buck Rogers fame to Taylor's right. Also in the cast, future TV stars, Rue McClanahan, Fannie Flagg, and Gary Sandy, in addition to Sylvia Syms and Carleton Carpenter (of MGM, Debbie Reynolds, and  "Abba-Dabba Honeymoon"). 

You can read more about Dinah East at Poseidon's Underworld


Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 -2013

ANGEL FACE 1953

As a child, the only film directors whose names and faces I recognized were Alfred Hitchcock and Otto Preminger. Hitchcock: for the obvious reasons (Honestly, was there ever such a talented, yet at the same time, tirelessly self-promoting, self-mythologizing director? One had to wonder when he found time to plot out all those famously intricate shots while still having the energy to chase Tippi Hedren around the set); and Otto Preminger: for his frequent colorful and quotable appearances on television talk shows like Merv Griffin, but especially for his portrayal of supervillain Mr. Freeze, on the Batman TV series.

Based on the quality (or, more accurately, the lack) of his latter-career output (Hurry Sundown, Skidoo, Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, Such Good Friends), for the longest time, I considered Otto Preminger more an eccentric TV personality than a serious director. It wasn't until my late-in-life exposure to some of his earlier films on TCM that I came to appreciate the diversity of this filmmaker’s output and the strides many of his films made in the battle against censorship. 

Although I still only enjoy but a handful of the films Preminger directed in his nearly 50-year career, among my favorites is Angel Face. A film, if Hollywood legends are to be believed, green-lighted by RKO studio head Howard Hughes specifically to make life miserable for soon-to-depart contract actress and recent Hughes object-of-obsession, Jean Simmons. (Check out IMDB’s Trivia section for details, or better still, the commentary track on the DVD.)  

Jean Simmons as Diane Tremayne

Robert Mitchum as Frank Jessup

The plot of Angel Face is your typical '50s femme fatale film noir to the point of déjà vu. Yet, one enlivened considerably by a particularly unsympathetic turn by genre stalwart Robert Mitchum, and the pleasingly against-type assaying of the role of an alluring psychopath by the beautiful, but to me, usually ineffectual, Jean Simmons.

Ambulance driver Frank Jessup (Mitchum) falls for dark-eyed socialite/siren, Diane Tremayne (LOVE that name!) when called to her estate to look into a suspicious case of gas inhalation suffered by Diane’s wealthy stepmother. With surprisingly little effort on her part, the distraught but grateful heiress insinuates herself into the life of Frank and standby girlfriend Mary (Mona Freeman), successfully opening up a chasm between the couple she’s more than willing to step into. In record time, and without alerting the suspicions of the shrewd but somewhat opportunistic Frank, Diane not only gets the laid-back lothario to detail for her the particulars of his love life and professional aspirations (a former race car driver, Frank dreams of opening a garage of his own), but unsubtly unburdens herself to him her own woeful tale of how she and her beloved father (Herbert Marshall) have fallen under the despotic sway of her bridge-club-addicted, purse-strings clutching, wealthy evil stepmother, Catherine (Barbara O’Neil).

Family Plot
Ever-leery moneybags Catherine Tremayne (Barbara O'Neil), listens guardedly as Diane (Jean Simmons) transparently campaigns to have hunky ambulance driver Frank Jessup taken on as a personal chauffeur. Meanwhile, emasculated novelist and full-time lapdog Charles Tremayne (Herbert Marshall) just hopes he's not doing anything to draw his wife's ire...like breathing.

Faster than you can say Double Indemnity and before that hearkened-after postman has had a chance to ring even once, Frank and Diane find themselves suspects in a nasty case of double homicide. Was it really an accident? Were they in on it together? Did you ever doubt it for a minute? To fans of the genre, the who, what, where, and whys of the plot won’t come as much of a surprise. What really makes Preminger’s steamy goulash of Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain so much black-hearted fun are its characters. The dark alleys of obsession and fixation Angel Face takes you through are murky with hidden agendas, neurotic pathologies, and the kind of moral cynicism that made noir films such a narrative oasis in the desert of suburban conformity that was Hollywood in the postwar years.

"Do you love me at all? I must know."
"Well, I suppose it's a kind of love. But with a girl like you, how can a man be sure?"

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I've always had a thing for film noir. I love all the intrigue, double-crosses, plot twists, and 11th-hour surprise reveals characteristic of the genre, but what has always appealed to me most is the genre's core of nastiness. It always seemed like such a brazen challenge to the Production Code-mandated moral conventions of the day.

In today’s climate of moral relativity, we have iniquity devoid of stakes. Barring an overriding imperative of decency, the kind of bad behavior exemplified by Charlie Sheen, Chris Brown, Lindsay Lohan, and the whole reality show “betray each other to win” mentality, exists within a misanthropic vacuum. That's why I have no patience with contemporary films which revel in the display of bad people behaving badly (cue, Quentin Tarantino); there's no measurable "good" behavior in these films for contrast.
Conversely, film noir works as the yin to the yang of America's idealized self-perception during the '40s and '50s. A time when movies, TV, and advertising all promoted a standard, middle-class image of conformity typified by those “social guidance films” shown in schools back then. 

The Ladies Who Lunch
Diane not-so-innocently sets up a lunch date with Frank's girlfriend, Mary (Mona Freeman), to let her know that Frank was not at all where he said he was the previous night.

The nihilism of film noir stood as a thrilling alternative to all those inevitable happy endings in movies from the 1940s & '50s. It is almost exhilarating to see movies in which people operate out of flagrant self-interest and behave in ways totally unconcerned with bettering society or helping their fellow man. Another nice difference is that so many of the women of film noir are so independent-minded. They're dangerous, sexually aggressive, and exert power over their lives. These extreme cultural contrasts are what give film noir its kick. Without the subtextual context of a repressed culture for the lead characters to rebel against, film noir would be like a great many of the movies and TV programs of today: just a bunch of unsympathetic people meeting bad ends.

Otto Preminger would revisit the theme of a close father/daughter relationship threatened by
 a stepmother in 1958s Bonjour Tristesse  

PERFORMANCES

Prior to seeing Angel Face, I’d read so many accounts of how unhappy Jean Simmons was during the making of the film that I leapt to the assumption that her portrayal of a wicked vamp was one of those against-type embarrassments like Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun (Simmons' embarrassment would come many decades later, as Helen Lawson in the 1981 TV version of Valley of the Dolls). I couldn't have been more wrong. Although I've only seen Simmons in a handful of films (she’s particularly appealing and her versatility shines in 1953s The Actress), her Angel Face femme fatale is one of her strongest, most persuasive screen performances. 

As the always-plotting Diana, Jean Simmons' somewhat remote, coy appeal is used to great effect in Angel Face 

Of course, Simmons’ performance is greatly enhanced by the chemistry she shares with co-star, Robert Mitchum. A sleepy-eyed hunk o’ burnin' love a person doesn't need Method Acting to believably express a sexual obsession over. Mitchum may not be an actor with a particularly broad range, but within that range, there’s not another leading man who can touch him. In the films I consider to be his best: Angel Face, Out of the Past, His Kind of Woman, Cape Fear, and The Night of the Hunter, Mitchum's slouching brand of masculine charisma has always revealed a hint of vulnerable malleability. Either that or outright sexual menace. In either instance, he dominates the screen with a natural ease that makes him a charismatic, fascinating actor to watch.

Fave character actor Leon Ames plays defense attorney Fred Barrett. A reversal of his chores in 1946s The Postman Always Rings Twice.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Fans of film noir generally agree that much of the genre’s predominately male perspective is fueled by a fear of women. Perhaps that’s what makes them so entertaining. It's like the male id unleashed...a woman with any kind of power perceived only as a threat to manhood. Indeed, unlike the self-sacrificing heroines of the popular “women’s films” of the day, the women of film noir tend to call all the shots and are as likely to kill a man as kiss him. Angel Face consistently juxtaposes Frank's loutish neglect of his girlfriend Mary, with his being manipulated and led around by the nose by the scheming Diane. At a time when women held very little social power and were inevitably relegated to supporting, serving, and supplicating, film noir provided one of the few arenas where women were allowed to show some moxie and guts. Alas, because the vast majority of these films were written and directed by males, women with power were also almost always made to pay for their gender transgressions, with "natural order" usually restored by fadeout.

なぜあなたは死んでドロップしない!
Roughly translated, Tremayne household maid Chiyo (Max Takasugi) tells her put-upon husband, Ito (Frank Kamagai) to "Drop dead!"

The world of Angel Face is one where the natural order is corrupted by domineering women (Diane, Catherine, and Chiyo) and emasculated men (Frank, Charles, and Ito, the household butler who laments, "The only trouble with America...it spoils the women!").

Revealing herself to be a far more self-possessed and level-headed character than initially perceived, Mary, having had enough of Frank's seesawing emotions, opts for the solid and loving Bill (Kenneth Tobey), a man who doesn't make her compete for his affections.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
If I were to pick my absolute favorite Otto Preminger movie, it would have to be Bonjour Tristesse (1958), that film is just a dream. But for pure noir bliss, I rate Angel Face above even the superior Laura (1944), which in spite of its excellence, has always seemed a tad too cool and never really has done much for me. Angel Face has the feel of a cheap pulp novel brought to life, complete with its economy of narrative and straight-to-the-point characterizations. While falling short of being a true classic of the genre, it stands as an example of the genre at its best. A fast and dark thrill ride through the Hollywood Hills...but I'd skip the short-cuts if I were you.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2013

UNDERAPPRECIATED TALENT: OLIVIA WILLIAMS

In a profession boasting an unemployment rate hovering somewhere around 85%, one can hardly call an actress as consistently employed as Olivia Williams an underutilized talent in the literal sense. On the contrary, while continuing to work extensively in both theater and television, Ms. Williams has appeared in major and independent films every year since first coming to the attention of U.S. audiences in Kevin Costner’s epic flop, The Postman in 1997.

It’s just that (in my not-so-humble opinion) Olivia Williams, in proportion to her talent, beauty, and versatility, deserves to be a bigger star than she is. Whether in roles comedic, Lucky Break – 2001; maternal, Peter Pan – 2003; earthy, Flashbacks of a Fool – 2008; sensitive, Rushmore – 1998, insightful, An Education – 2009, or (my personal favorite) vitriolic, The Ghost Writer – 2010; Williams has amassed an impressive catalog of unflaggingly impeccable screen performances. Performances that have rightfully granted her a reputation as an accomplished supporting actress capable of enlivening even the most prosaic of projects, but also performances that, by rights, should have made her into one of Hollywood’s most sought-after leading ladies.

 

Traditionally, America has never really quite known what to do with British actresses, their alienating accents allocating them to roles of teachers, nannies, historical heroines, authority figures, or Joan Colins-esque divas. Too often, unless a British actress is capable of adopting an American accent for high-profile roles (a la, Kate Winslet, and indeed as Williams did in both The Postman and The Sixth Sense), she finds her fate to be something akin to that of Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, and Maggie Smith: significant Stateside success reserved for middle age and beyond.

A member of The Royal Shakespeare Company, Olivia Williams has shined in many prominent roles, winning a British Independent Film Award for The Heart of Me (2002) and being named Best Supporting Actress by the National Society of Film Critics and the London Critics Circle for The Ghost Writer. Yet, owing in large part to her posh speaking voice, short-sighted casting directors have failed to make use of William’s intelligent, Julie Christie-like sensuality and drop-dead sexuality (so often hidden behind desks and corseted in period clothing, few seem aware that Olivia Williams has a killer body).

 I’m no doubt making a plea for a brand of stardom and recognition the actress is probably not in the least bit interested, but when I read how she’s completed work on a forthcoming Arnold Schwarzenegger action film (Ten - 2014) or has lent her smooth, sonorous voice to the animated, Justin and the Knights of Valor (2013), my mind can’t help but go to the analogy of using a thoroughbred racehorse to pull a milk cart.

Recommended for Olivia Williams fans: The Sixth Sense (1999), Anna Karenina (2012), Hanna (2011), Hyde Park on Hudson (2012), Seasons 1 & 2 of Dollhouse on DVD.

The versatile and award-winning co-star of Maps to the Stars, Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer, The Sixth Sense, An Education, Rushmore, Anna Karenina, and many others, is the topic of my Moviepilot article - Underutilized Natural Resource: Olivia Williams. Click on the title to read my tribute to one of the best  actresses to come out of Great Britain since Julie Christie!

AUTOGRAPH FILES;

Copyright © Ken Anderson